Tuesday, November 05, 2002
I remember watching Maynila: sa Kuko ng Liwanag. It made me fall in love with our city in the 70's. Nostalgic trip for a time when i wasn't even born yet - or had just yet been born. But there is something wonderful about that period. Maybe the grittiness of the film really showed it. Joey and I went to this heritage tour thing of Manila and even the old pictures sent my heart fluttering with melancholy. Imagine walking down the streets of Escolta and view old theaters, art deco buildings and storefronts.
From Mission Impossible 1: Filipino Filmmaking 1896-1986
Lino Brocka (1940-1991), like Gerardo de Leon, was the spokesman and master filmmaker of his generation. Raised poor and rural, Brocka studied to be a Mormon missionary, worked with homeless in San Francisco, and taught in Hawaii before returning to the Philippines in his late-Twenties. An aspiring actor, he also wrote and directed for the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) both on stage and for its television show. In 1970, Brocka made his first film Wanted: Perfect Mother. It combined the current hit The Sound of Music with a Filipine comic serial (a governess struggles with her brood of orphans), and achieved box office success. Brocka's career was built on the fact that, in three weeks, he could write and direct a film which could make as much money as an American import. Over the next four years he made nine films.
Brocka was a controversial figure, the subject of both praise and criticism. But he was certainly a prolific filmmaker. Among the best of the more than 70 films he made are Maynila: In the Claws of Neon (1975) and Jaguar (1979) which depict the Philippines in a gritty, realistic style. He has was criticised for Bona (1980), which uses well-known movie stars to make a film that, he claimed, attacked the star system; Kontrobersyal (1980), a film condemning pornography, but which was itself deemed pornographic... and Ang Bayan Ko (My Country; Clinging to a Knife Edge, 1984), a Filipine entry in the 1984 Cannes Film Festival which was disowned by the Filipine government. Brocka was a trenchant critic of the Marcos government, and despite being censored (during the latter period of martial law, his films were smuggled out of the country for screenings) and imprisonment, he continued to fight censorship and agitate against the Marcos regime in both his life and his films.
Incidentally one of my teachers in DLSU was Clodualdo del Mundo, who wrote the screenplay of Maynila: Sa Kuko ng Liwanag. Bembol Roco also starred in the film The Year of Living Dangerously starring Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson
From Mission Impossible 1: Filipino Filmmaking 1896-1986
Lino Brocka (1940-1991), like Gerardo de Leon, was the spokesman and master filmmaker of his generation. Raised poor and rural, Brocka studied to be a Mormon missionary, worked with homeless in San Francisco, and taught in Hawaii before returning to the Philippines in his late-Twenties. An aspiring actor, he also wrote and directed for the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) both on stage and for its television show. In 1970, Brocka made his first film Wanted: Perfect Mother. It combined the current hit The Sound of Music with a Filipine comic serial (a governess struggles with her brood of orphans), and achieved box office success. Brocka's career was built on the fact that, in three weeks, he could write and direct a film which could make as much money as an American import. Over the next four years he made nine films.
Brocka was a controversial figure, the subject of both praise and criticism. But he was certainly a prolific filmmaker. Among the best of the more than 70 films he made are Maynila: In the Claws of Neon (1975) and Jaguar (1979) which depict the Philippines in a gritty, realistic style. He has was criticised for Bona (1980), which uses well-known movie stars to make a film that, he claimed, attacked the star system; Kontrobersyal (1980), a film condemning pornography, but which was itself deemed pornographic... and Ang Bayan Ko (My Country; Clinging to a Knife Edge, 1984), a Filipine entry in the 1984 Cannes Film Festival which was disowned by the Filipine government. Brocka was a trenchant critic of the Marcos government, and despite being censored (during the latter period of martial law, his films were smuggled out of the country for screenings) and imprisonment, he continued to fight censorship and agitate against the Marcos regime in both his life and his films.
Incidentally one of my teachers in DLSU was Clodualdo del Mundo, who wrote the screenplay of Maynila: Sa Kuko ng Liwanag. Bembol Roco also starred in the film The Year of Living Dangerously starring Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson
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